The statements in this section merely provide background information related to the present disclosure and may not constitute prior art.
In a conventional method of distillation and dehydration of ethanol from a beer mash, which contains ethanol, water, and solids, the mash is preheated and fed into a distillation column. In the distillation column, the mash is concentrated by evaporation, and the solids are removed as a bottom product together with water. A portion of the bottom product is usually returned to the distillation column after heating.
In some systems a first distillate in the form of a vapor, which still contains water, ethanol, and fusel oils, is fed, possibly via a collecting and mixing tank, into a second distillation column, which is designed as a rectifying column. A more extensive separation is carried out in this rectifying column, and the fusel oils are removed in a sidestream. Of the water separated as bottom product in the second distillation column, a small fraction is returned to the rectifying column after heating, and the remainder is removed, so that it is eliminated from the production process. The distillate of the second distillation column, which, as before, contains water and ethanol, can be partly returned to the first and second distillation columns, possibly via the aforementioned collecting tank, to increase ethanol purity or treat the fluids in accordance with a recipe.
Known column innards including downcomber plates and tubes are welded static prohibiting plate and tube interchanges or removal. It has become evident that replacing and changing downcomer tubes and/or plates can advantageously affect run characteristics and enable a brewer or distiller flexibility when making products and designing a product line.
Further, known distillation columns often do not have a tight seal between downcomber plates and side walls of the distillation column. Known sealing methods try to weld the plate to the inner wall of the column body to create a tight seal. These welds are often porous or incomplete as the difficulty in welding in small confines often proves too challenging. Welding is further problematic as the diametric size of distillation columns is reduced. Therefore it would be advantageous to make an internal seal without the use of welding.